Organic Valley tricks coffee snobs into drinking straight half-and-half

If you ever find yourself in a trendy part of Manhattan at a television camera-filled shop that charges $2 for a cup of plain half-and-half, know that someone is probably trying to make fun of you.

Organic Valley set up such a storefront recently, then watched gleefully as New Yorkers streamed in and shelled out the cash without missing a beat.

The stunt was set up for the purposes of the farmer-owned food brand's latest commercial, which is meant to highlight the pretensions of hip big-city coffee culture.

The commercial centers on a folksy-seeming Organic Valley farmer named Gerrit van Tol, who delivers a straight-faced parody of every artisan-brand cliche in the book along his quest to open the fake pop-up boutique.  

"If you want to be taken seriously in the coffee world," he matter-of-factly advises. "You need a tiny storefront in a hip neighborhood in New York City."

The commercial is full of on-point asides like that -- van Tol thinks he needs "some modern logo with an 'X' in it or some arrows;" he describes a cow as his "secret barista;" and he takes pains to explain the various types of plants that go into the animals' "grass blend."

"There's a real 'grassiness' to it," he says of "rye grass from New Zealand" as he takes a bite.

In the hapless hipsters' defense, there was at least free coffee provided in creamer canisters. And anything that only costs $2 is cheap in New York.

Coffee snobs are only the latest punching bags for Organic Valley's ridicule. With help from Tennessee-based ad agency Humanaut, the company has also scored big hits with a spoof of the over-polished aspiration-mongering of lifestyle ads and a campaign to "Save the Bros."

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